Ray Fawkes talks One Soul and One Line from Oni Press!

Ray Fawkes Interview

[00:00:00] Melissa: This is spoiler country and I’m Alyssa searcher today on the show I get to chat with award-winning writer and artist Ray Fox. Welcome to the show.

Ray Fawkes: Hi,

Melissa: thanks for having me. Thanks for being here. How are you doing today?

Ray Fawkes: Not too

Melissa: bad. Good. Awesome. Well, let’s get right into it. You’re a writer and an artist comic books, graphic novels, and you’ve written for a lot of big, you know, big companies, Marvel, DC image aftershock, just to name a few.

But then you also have your own creator owned series as well. I wanted to ask you a term I keep seeing is DIY fiction. And I wanted to know, what is that, what does that mean to you? And is that sort of similar to like self publishing?

Ray Fawkes: Yeah, kind of is. I mean, you know, where it really comes from for me is when I was younger, I used to sort of hang out with a bunch of XenServers, like people who would make their own zenes of [00:01:00] poetry or artwork or whatever, and, and sell them.

At tables at shows or, or even just like exchange them with each other. Some of them were music scenes and sort of the phrase DIY fiction and got passed around a lot too with the people who wrote fiction scenes. And I kind of that aesthetic has always kind of stayed with me the idea of being totally free to create something experimental and wild and not really be too concerned about whether it has wide market appeal.

That was the thing, you know, when it was zenes. I remember being amazed at the crazy tiny niches that some people would make their zenes for like fans of a specific band or people who were into just one particular kind of fiction, you know, that always stuck with me.

Melissa: So it’s like writing what you want to write and not writing to market or trend.

Ray Fawkes: Yeah. And, and sort of with the idea of not letting anything slow you down, not worrying about finding a publisher or, or how the final book is going to look or, or [00:02:00] anything like that. It’s just sitting down and getting it done and then worrying about all that stuff afterwards.

Melissa: Wow. I’m going to have to try that.

That’s a great interesting concept too, just because you don’t get bogged down with having these preconceived ideas of, of how it should end up. Cause we all know that can cause, you know, quote unquote writer’s block, right?

Ray Fawkes: Yeah, of course. And you know, I find, and this was true of me originally too.

A lot of people sort of slow themselves down because they try to find agents and publishers and they sort of pitch and pitch and pitch and, and they. Spend, they start to seem some people so seem to get frustrated, feeling like they’re spending more time pitching and tailoring their ideas to the market instead of actually completing their ideas.

And so the idea of a kind of DIY approaches to say, this is the book I want to do. And just go ahead and do it and then see what you can do with it.

Melissa: Wow. I really like that. I don’t hear enough people talking about that actually. Cause everyone is [00:03:00] so obsessed with, you know, obviously for good reason, you know, trying to get published and, and find agents and things like that.

But the creative spark does get lost, you know, along the way sometimes.

Ray Fawkes: Yeah. Frankly, it becomes less fun. Yeah, the idea is to, if, if you’ve always wanted to write, you know, very specific fiction about carpentry or whatever, there’s no market for that. Or people might say that, but go ahead and do it and write your crazy carpentry book.

And then of course, what does happen sometimes. And what did start to happen with me is you find an audience and then when that happens, A publisher has become obviously more amenable to you than they probably would have been in the first place. So the DIY approach does sometimes really work out.

Yeah.

Melissa: When you end up creating your own market, essentially, because, you know, there was always one person that was the first right in each, you know, specific genre or sub genre. So I guess if you do some things completely, what is, you know, maybe considered [00:04:00] off the wall or not marketable, you could be that first person to create that market.

Ray Fawkes: Absolutely. Especially if what you’re creating is very sincere and very, you know, very much coming from your place of true passion. You know, sometimes you find other people who, who share that passion, or even if not people who are. Taken in, by the absolute sincerity with which you did your work. Yeah.

Melissa: No, that makes a lot of sense.

And then when you’re writing and you’re also doing art, cause I know you’ve done both on the same project and you’ve done separate on various projects, but when you’re working on the same. Doing it for the same project. You’re the writer, you’re the artist. You’re completely responsible for the whole thing.

What is that process like? Do you do the writing first or the art or kind of at the same time?

Ray Fawkes: Well, you know, when it’s, for myself, it becomes a lot more of a free flow. It, I definitely do sit down and write out an outline and I do Depending on how structured I want the piece to look in the end, [00:05:00] outright a have a more solid outline or a much looser one.

But it is definitely like. I will, I, I will say I, I, I step into the art a lot earlier than I would, if I was handing a script off to an artist when I’m handing a script off to an artist, I, I try to make the script a lot more specific and Polish so that they know exactly what I’m trying to convey.

But when it’s me, myself, I know I can just write things down that are almost just. Like trigger ideas. So I can just say, you know, for the next five pages, get this idea across. And then for the following two pages, you know, maybe then I will write some tighter dialogue or something. It becomes it’s much more like improvisation when it’s just myself doing your work.

Melissa: Okay. Yeah, because you have a lot more freedom and you, you know, we all recognize our own notes right. In handwriting. And so you can leave yourself a little symbol and be like, okay, I know what this means when I go back.

Ray Fawkes: Absolutely. Absolutely. However, I do have to say, it’s not like it saves any time, because then what happens is once I’ve drawn the [00:06:00] piece, I actually become a much more I guess a bit of like almost brutal with myself about the edits and I go back over it over and over and over again.

I think when I’ve drawn my own book I, I re edit the text, something like five or six times before I send it off to be published. Okay.

Melissa: Would you say you’re a perfectionist. Yes.

Ray Fawkes: Yeah. That’s I wouldn’t say that. I’m kind of one of those writers who feels like if the, if the word or the phrase isn’t perfect.

I’m not happy.

Melissa: Yeah, no, that makes sense. And well, and you’re putting your name on it. And I think we’re the most critical of ourselves, right? Like your editor would probably be like, Oh, it’s great. And you’re like, no, I need another draft.

Ray Fawkes: Yeah, definitely. And you know, when it’s myself, when I’m the only one putting a piece together and I’m not collaborating, then I kind of have a little bit of the everyone’s going to be looking directly at me and I have nobody else.

To shift anything onto. So, the perfectionism does come out even more. I also am like I [00:07:00] don’t want to be such a perfectionist sometimes when I’m working with a collaborator, because I mean, that can be, it can come across as kind of difficult.

Melissa: Mm. Yeah. Yeah. You want to just be kind of like easy going through the whole process and well, and I’m sure they have their own perfectionist issues as well that they’re dealing with those, you know what I mean?

On top of that, so, yeah. Yeah.

Ray Fawkes: I don’t need to slap my ideas on top of there.

Melissa: Right. Well, you know, aside from, you know, the, I know you’ve done a lot of superhero stuff like Batman and Wolverines, aside from that, you seem to be drawn to. A genre is that are, are darker, you know, a paranormal horror enough that superheroes aren’t dark cause they can be.

But you know, in those particular genres, have you always wanted to, to write in that type of genre

Ray Fawkes: for as long as I can remember? Yeah. I I’ve always been fascinated with darker stuff and you know, actually when I was a kid, I was really, really scared of a lot of that stuff actually, but I was still was fascinated with ghost stories and everything.

I would kind of scare myself on [00:08:00] purpose, reading books and things and comics. And then, you know, when I got older into my teenage years and then my twenties, it hit, it kind of became the main focus of what I was into. I kind of, I don’t know, I’ve always loved it. I’ve always found it. It’s a, it’s a really beautiful way to get at the heart.

Of a lot of truths that people don’t want to address any other way. It’s a close brother to science fiction. You know, because, but with science fiction, people kind of speculate about where things might go and they do a lot of talking about the present with their ideas about the future. But I find with horror, it’s like people want to talk about things in the present.

By looking at the presence in a different way. And that’s always fascinated me. Yeah.

Melissa: And with scifi, I’ve noticed that fans and readers tend to get too hung up on the logistics. You know, they start questioning, Oh, well, could [00:09:00] this really happen? Or, you know, you’ll create maybe a system or a weapon and you get people that are like, Oh, that’s, that’s not possible.

Whereas like with horror and paranormal like you were saying, people are just more interested in like the, the crux of the story.

Ray Fawkes: You certainly, you can also be a lot more expressionistic with horror. I’m drawn towards things that are not only unexplained, but might actually be impossible to comprehend sometimes because I think the universe kind of is that way.

And so I’m, I find that the fans of horror fiction are very tolerant of things that don’t have simple explanations.

Melissa: Do you study

Ray Fawkes: philosophy? I do. Yes. Yeah, yeah.

Melissa: Yeah. And what’s who, who are some of your, you know, your favorites, philosophers to

Ray Fawkes: read? I mean, you know, for me personally, just because it, it helps me with my life.

I love the Stoics. Marcus are really us and the like, but you know, if I’m [00:10:00] starting to get. Heavy. I’ve always loved some of the Oh, it’s a really hard question to answer because you can go in so many directions. Like, I really love some of the old you know, far Eastern philosophy where they, they really try to get into the idea of, of how to live in this universe and, and, and.

You know what our life means, you know, the idea of, of the repetition of lives until you, you get it right. Basically. And then I do really love some of the you know, sort of more out there, Christian philosophers, like, you know, Meister, Eckhart you know, and, and You know, even Aquinas like the, these guys who get really into this sort of drill really down deep into ethics and the meaning of, of trying to be good or whether the universe itself is good and that kind of stuff.

You know, I think that kind of stuff dovetails directly into a lot of horror fiction, most, especially some of the stuff [00:11:00] You know, the early 20th century and late 19th century stuff where you like Lord Dunson and HP Lovecraft, where they started to talk about an uncaring universe. Yeah.

Melissa: And you can just see like the connection that like Mary Shelley had with Lord Byron as well.

You know, that was like a direct correlation of those two worlds kind of coming together.

Ray Fawkes: Yeah. And I actually a source of a lot of the conflict in their fiction and their poetry and supposedly a lot of personal conflict between

Melissa: them. Yeah, absolutely. Now, when you’re writing your own stuff versus, you know, writing in a sense.

Universes do you prefer one or the other? And is either one like more challenging than the other?

Ray Fawkes: W you know, it’s kind of like, eating two different kinds of cuisine. You know, I, I prefer the freedom of doing my own piece, but when I’m working in an established universe, I prefer the fact that.

The pieces that you’re playing with are packed with [00:12:00] so much, meaning already, you know, they kind of both have their strengths and weaknesses. You know, when I’m doing my own piece, I can literally do anything I want. And nobody’s going to say no to me. But on the other hand, I have to sell everything from the start to the readers.

Whereas if I’m doing a Batman piece or a, or a, you know, an X-Men piece or something I may not be as free to cover any subject. I. That comes to me. But you know, if you come into a piece of fiction with a character who’s been around for 50 plus years or 70 plus years, they are packed with so much symbolic power that you, you don’t have to spend any time selling the readers on what your world means, because.

There’s such potent imagery already in the reader’s minds that you you’re sort of playing with a different set of tools. And it’s one that you can use to approach stories in a very different way. I like, I love them both.

Melissa: Okay. Yeah. And they’re already, the readers are [00:13:00] there too. I mean, like you said, they already know the universe.

They’re there because they’re fans already, for the most part, I think, you know, you’re not, I don’t think you’re getting a lot of new fans unless they’re just younger generations coming up, but I think most adults they’re, they’re they’re comics that they, they follow and will continue to follow. So that, I mean, that must be challenging though, in itself too.

Do you ever feel any pressure like, Oh, I have to. You know, kind of keep doing this so that they are happy with what they’re getting, you know,

Ray Fawkes: I mean, no, honestly I find the same rules apply. Like if the story that you tell is sincere and well told the fans will love it. I actually find that fans tend to come to a book with an established character, prepared to love it and hoping to love it.

It’s, it’s. Yeah, I, I don’t, I don’t feel that much pressure writing for the fans. I actually, honestly, I feel more pressure writing a piece. That’s that’s entirely my own thing, a creator own thing, because in that case it’s more like people, people, people are prepared to love a book about a [00:14:00] character.

They already love. People are prepared to ignore a book they’ve never heard of.

Melissa: Yeah, no, that’s a really good point. Speaking of a book that you wrote that is not ignored at all that’s being rereleased I guess, right. For the 10th anniversary is one soul being released by Oni press that was out in 2012.

And around that time, and you were nominated for an Eisner for this. So, you know, congratulations for that. That’s amazing. Yeah, so basically it was, it was really well received and I wanted to know, how has your perception changed of that story now that it’s 10 years later.

Ray Fawkes: Well, yes, in, in a very kind of mundane way, when I was doing that book, it was such a high, high concept experiment for me that I had no idea if it would be well-received. I had no idea if people would like it. It was to me, a very important book to write and a one that I really hoped would [00:15:00] communicate something to people, but.

As I did it, I had no concept of whether people would like it at all. And now of course, 10 years later having released the book to some, a claim and definitely to the appreciation of some readers You know, and having heard from people who read it and, and felt it was effective. Obviously I see it completely differently.

Yeah.

Melissa: And it’s, it’s about 18 people and from different you know, uh, time periods and it’s their lives, right. From birth to death. I’m curious, what inspired you to, to write this particular story?

Ray Fawkes: Well, I mean, the first thing that inspired me was a purely mechanical thing about comics, which was that I realized some, I had seen some comics and read a few where more than one story was being told on the same page, even ones where it seemed like it was the same story, but they would do a scene shift in the middle of the page.

And I noticed that I, [00:16:00] as a comic book reader, I had no trouble processing that. Yeah. And I began to think, and I began to sort of go into my notes and say, I wonder how far you can push that. I wonder how many simultaneous stories you could tell that a reader would be able to process all at once. And I hooked into the idea of using the simultaneous stories and a kind of recursive, poetic text in the stories too.

To sort of tell a self-contained irony to, to tell a story about 18. I chose 18 because of the nine panel grid, which is a traditional comic book. But I thought to myself, can I tell 18 simultaneous stories about completely different people and yet demonstrate all the commonalities in the lives of human beings.

People who are so different than have no reason to be the same, who live all around the world in all different places, from all [00:17:00] different pieces, with so many different circumstances. Can I tell their lives without being artificial about it or trying not to be artificial and yet still convey the sensation that we all live a shared experience.

Melissa: Right. That’s so interesting. And aside from the commonalities are the actual characters connected in any literal sense?

Ray Fawkes: I never answered that question. Because there, there is enough in the text that has caused readers to can create different theories about that. And I don’t want to interfere with any of those readings.

Melissa: Okay, well, let me ask you this. Were there any characters that you had created that didn’t make the

Ray Fawkes: cut? Yeah. Several. When I first conceived of the idea I had a huge list of characters and I Sort of boiled it down into 18 and mostly the ones that didn’t make the cut were because they [00:18:00] had aspects that I felt too much repeated some of the aspects of certain other characters or I felt that they were causing an imbalance within the 18 characters.

So it was, it was really like, I was, I was doing it for Like, I guess I would say I was, I was choosing the characters. I chose to create a kind of if network hosts narratives and the characters that I ultimately did not choose were ones that I think didn’t strengthen the network at all.

Melissa: Okay.

And without giving too much away for those who haven’t read it yet you know, what types of themes do you explore in the story?

Ray Fawkes: Well, I mean, in, in one soul ideal with themes of of passion and achievements. And most specifically I deal with the seam of life and death and the question of why life happens at all, if it must end in death, and if the death can be [00:19:00] unexpected or seem unjust,

Melissa: Wow.

Okay. That’s really interesting. And that probably stems from a lot of your philosophy findings as well. Do you, do you tend to, you know, go through some of your favorite books and reread them while you’re doing

Ray Fawkes: research? Definitely. Yeah. Yeah. And You know, I mean, as I was doing the book, I was, I was deep in thinking a lot about the idea of life and death and, and how a life can be summed up from birth until death and not be judged, not be considered a good life or a bad life, but rather just a life.

Yeah.

Melissa: Do you believe in reincarnation?

Ray Fawkes: And my jury’s out on that one. I’m I’m too much of a scientist to say. Definitely. Yes and too much of a philosopher to say. Definitely. No. Okay.

Melissa: Nice, good answer. Well, but the other exciting news too, is that now you’re releasing a SQL, so I’m [00:20:00] sure the fans are really excited about that.

It’s called one line. What can you tell us about it?

Ray Fawkes: Well, one soul was the story about 18 individual lives and I felt that. No, as I was creating it I was telling the entire story of the lives of the people in it. But there was a piece that was always kind of missing for me. I’m pleased to say no one else has said this.

So, the book does stand on its own, but for me, I always felt that the circumstances can lead to the way somebody lives their life. Can be created by the lives that came before them. So one line is a book about 18 families and it follows them through several generations. So, whereas one soul followed single individuals from birth till death.

One line follows the 18 different families from sort of the creation of their lines until.

Melissa: Okay. And are and I don’t know if you can answer this, but are these characters and any [00:21:00] way related to the characters in one soul, or is it completely separate group of

Ray Fawkes: people? They are a completely separate group of people, but some of the characters from one soul do appear in one line.

And some of the characters in one line are related to characters from one soul. Oh,

Melissa: interesting. So the fans will probably be happy and fuel some more of their theory from guessing. I’m

Ray Fawkes: sure they will notice things. Yeah.

Melissa: What do you think the underlying message is that you are hoping to convey with us this one and with one soul, I guess both of them combined?

Ray Fawkes: Well, I mean, you know, my message with one soul, I think could be boiled down to the fact that life is. Beautiful in its way. I, that sounds contrite, but that really is the final message. And that we are all living through the same ineffable thing together whether we can see it or not. We are all living the experience of being [00:22:00] human and one line, I feel like one line.

Is a book about how you let yourself be defined. And whether you see the history you inherit as something that will create the boundaries of your life, or will inspire you to. Go beyond those boundaries.

Melissa: Okay. Now has any current events or like pandemic life as any of that played any part or influenced on your writing?

Ray Fawkes: Well, pandemic life certainly has because it’s got me locked up in my house with you, but work you know, has, I was writing one line though, a lot of the events of last year We’re unfolding and they definitely you know, a lot of the demonstrations following, you know, the George Floyd incident and the murder Were happening as I was writing this book.

And you know, [00:23:00] even, even further beyond that, the election in the us and the sort of effects it seemed to be having around the world I was very aware of the divisions between people and, and that all fed into the work very strongly. It was something I always wanted to talk about. And it was something that became.

It sort of became front and center.

Melissa: Yeah. Yeah. I can imagine. I mean, especially when you’re dealing with telling stories of people, you know, not superheroes or fantasy, but actual, you know, people it must have been, you know, too hard not to, you know, incorporate that in.

Ray Fawkes: It was impossible, actually, you know, like, I don’t know if I was picking something up out of the air or what the, when I sat down to begin the book, I knew that it was going to be a book about prejudice and, and inherited animosities and also inherited alliances.

And you know, the, the events of last year, really just sort of. You [00:24:00] know, blew the whole idea of that into such sharp focus for me that it, it began to feel very right to do this book right now.

Melissa: Yeah. Now, would you consider yourself an optimist or a pessimist surrounding those types of themes?

Ray Fawkes: I consider myself an optimist and I’m constantly surprised to see that people read my books and consider them pessimistic.

Everybody in one soul. This is not a spoiler. Everybody in one soul eventually dies. The book is about their entire lives. And I was frankly shocked to see how many people told me that they thought that it was a sad book because of that. But I think it’s a very optimistic book and I feel like one line is also a very optimistic book, but you never know.

I might take it out to stores and signings and people tell me that I’m the darkest man.

Melissa: People are just crying as they meet you.

Ray Fawkes: It’s happened before.

Melissa: Wow. Yeah, I guess that would be, that’s an interesting concept because you know, nobody [00:25:00] really likes to talk about life and death. I think, you know, the average person it’s a scary concept.

So I guess that’s why most people would view it as a negative thing. I mean, I guess it is, it’s a, it is a negative thing. No one wants that to happen, but it is essentially, like you’re saying, you know, it’s a part of the cycle of, and the whole purpose, I guess, or. We don’t even really know the purpose.

Right. Is that something you explore a lot? Just the whole meaning behind it all

Ray Fawkes: for sure. Or we don’t know the purpose at all. And that is definitely something that’s a part of the book is wondering what the point of it is. And you know, it’s, it’s, it’s It’s a tough question. Maybe it is really sad that everybody does.

Melissa: No, I mean, I think it’s maybe you’re somewhere in between like that and being a realist, you know?

Ray Fawkes: Yeah. Yeah. I like to think that I look realistically at the world, but I’m hopeful about it. Yeah.

Melissa: And so do you have a dreamer

Ray Fawkes: tendencies? Yeah, for sure. Absolutely. I do. I would be surprised if I could find a writer who didn’t.

Melissa: Right, right. Very [00:26:00] true. And just from a scientific aspect, did you do any like genealogy research at all? You know, those sites like 23 and me and they are, you know, thank you. Can dive deep into those as just tracking, you know, your ancestral line. Did you do any of that?

Ray Fawkes: I’ve, I’ve done. I did a bunch of research on, you know, genealogies, but I didn’t actually do any on mine.

Melissa: Oh, really? Okay. Interesting. You haven’t done the kit

Ray Fawkes: yet? No, I’ve never done that kit or anything like that? I’m not sure why. I think it, it just, I dunno, it’s maybe something I’d get around you someday, but it wasn’t a part of this book.

Melissa: Yeah. Did you find anything interesting or something that you might not have known about before when you were doing your

Ray Fawkes: research?

Oh man. Well, yeah, always many things. You know, a lot of it was historical. A lot of it was stuff like I, you know, I have two families in the book that are derived from a mercenary family like two mercenary soldiers in Italy. And man, I had to get pretty [00:27:00] deep into figuring out. Wow. The whole country of Italy got put together.

And that was pretty interesting.

Melissa: Yeah. It’s kind of a crazy story. I’m Italian Sicilian specifically. Yeah. And Sicily yeah. Itself is very, you know, they were conquered by everybody. So we have all these different influences in the architecture and stuff sitting. Yeah. Yeah.

Ray Fawkes: Because in the book, our brothers who ended up settling in Venice.

Oh, cool. And, but they’re sort of traveling mercenaries and, and through their families, you kind of see a bit of the creation of Italy.

Melissa: Oh interesting. Now it also reminds me a little bit of a documentary I saw a years ago. I can’t remember the name of it, of course, but it was a company that studied. They did a study where they chose a handful of people to, to literally research them from the moment of their birth.

I know

Ray Fawkes: what you’re talking about. Are you talking about the up movies? Like seven up 14 up 21 up. I think

Melissa: so. I think [00:28:00] that’s what it’s called, where they, they kind of study them and kind of try to see if their environment has any effect on, you know, what they end up becoming if it affects their health.

It’s so good. Did you discover or use any of those kinds of similar themes when you were writing? As far as like taking into that account of, you know, their birth was in this particular, you know, environment, and then did that affect how you wrote them as an adult?

Ray Fawkes: Yes, absolutely. Those themes come into play very strongly in one line.

Those movies were recommended to me actually by someone who read one soul and had asked me if I’d ever seen them. And I hadn’t and I went to see them and I just loved them. I think they’re amazing. Yeah.

Melissa: I don’t think I’ve seen the films. It was a special, I think on the films, a documentary of some sort, I got it in one of my college classes, actually there’s one, a philosophy class I was taking.

And I watched, I was just so fascinated by how, you know, these people ended up. Completely different from, from house. Some of them are the same, but most of them are, [00:29:00] you know, ended up completely, excuse me, different from how they started, which you know, is such an interesting concept when you consider like that whole dichotomy of like social conditioning versus natural.

Yeah. So you did explore those themes as well.

Ray Fawkes: Yes, for sure.

Melissa: Nice. Well, so before I let you go, what’s, you know, is there going to be another, you know, book in this series? Or are, is this it for you in this?

Ray Fawkes: I think this series is done. I think with, I did one soul, I did a book called the people inside that played with a kind of similar narrative technique and it was about love.

And now I’m doing Now I’ve done one line, which is about inheritance both good and bad. And I think at this point I am done with this narrative style. I, you know, I say that and then who knows maybe five years from now, I’m going to jump up and say, Holy moly, I have a new idea that must be told in this way.

But right now I believe [00:30:00] that series is

Melissa: done. Okay. Is there anything else you can tease or hint about? I know you can’t give too much away, but as far as what you’re working on next for your next, you know, creator owned graphic novel.

Sure.

Ray Fawkes: Well, I mean, you know, I’m actually doing kind of a similar thing when I finished one soul.

But thing about one soul and the people inside, and one line is that they’re so rigid. That I have to work with this nine panel page over and over again. And after I finished one soul, I did this completely outrageously experimental horror book called intersect where there were no. Wow. I I’m kind of going in the similar direction.

I’ve begun a new book that hasn’t been announced yet. I, I can’t even say the name of it yet, but I am working on it now. And it’s a horror piece that is very dreamlike and free flowing again. And I guess it’s just a reaction to having to draw the same nine panels over and over again for a year. Oh, wow.

Melissa: That sounds really interesting. [00:31:00] And when will you be able to talk more about this? This is something you’re coming out soon or, or it’s now

Ray Fawkes: it’s in process. So, you know, by the summer I should be able to talk about it and it’s probably going to be coming out in the around autumn or, or perhaps shortly after that.

Melissa: Okay. Okay. Awesome. Well, we’ll have to have you back on to talk about that, then I’d be happy to. Yeah. Well, thanks so much for coming on today. This has been an absolute pleasure. Thank you. Yeah, well, everyone listening, make sure to check out the 10th anniversary edition of one soul and you can also pre-order one line which releases on July 20th.

Thank you Ray so much for being on today.

Ray Fawkes: Thanks very much. Thank you again.

Melissa: Yeah, absolutely.